Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback On the Spear/Scoundrel Problem...

Pretty sure we all feel like spear builds are pretty underwhelming. Decent ones are pretty rare in shops, and even then, there are so few skills available outside of warfare.

The list of damaging skills that scale with finesse, which DO NOT require a dagger, outside of warfare skills, is basically just Chloroform and Bull Rush.

(Looks like Bull Rush depends on your weapon type, i.e would scale with strength with a 2h sword)

In my opinion it seems like more of the Polymorph skills should scale with finesse. Considering the 'Metaporph' starting class is the only one with a spear.

If Bullrush scales with finesse, why can Medusa Head (Petrifying Visage technically), Tentacle Lash, and Flay Skin not?

I also feel like a few more Scoundrel skills could get away from requiring a dagger. Obviously 'Throwing Knife' etc would require a dagger, and anything that back-stabs, but why does Corrupted Blade, Gag Order, Sleeping Arms and Rupture Tendons etc.

Personally I feel like if there were just a few more finesse scaling skills, a Warfare/Poly/Scoundrel Finesse build with spears would be pretty viable.

TL;DR: More Poly skills should scale off finesse instead of Strength, less Scoundrel skills should require a dagger.

Thoughts?

Honestly Throwing Knife does not need a dagger. You are not throwing your dagger, you are throwing knifes, attacks with bow/crossbow don't afford you to have a stock of arrows/bolts, so the same could go for those throwing daggars. In the end, a weapon for close combat and a weapon for throwing have to meet different criteria to be effective anyway.

But a spear is a piercing weapon, not a cutting weapon, so cutting someones tendrons or even his throat would be pretty hard to achieve with a spear. But there are many warfare skills that work similar too Bull rush and would work with a spear as well as with a two-handed strength weapon.

In general Polymorph is a multi-class skill tree. Some skills are more for warriors like tentacle, some are for mages like Medusa, some a typical scoundrel like chameleon, but most are not that specific at all.

But it would not make much sense to have a magical attack like Medusa head scale with Finesse for example. Though I think it would make sense to be able to backstab with any kind of piercing weapon and not only daggers, so spears and arrows aswell though it would make archers even more broken, so spears alone would probably suffice.

You say Medusa head shouldn't scale with Finesse as its for mages but at the moment it scales with Strength anyway, as does Tentacle lash.

I know Poly is meant to be the multi class tree but I think more skills should scale off finesse throughout the whole game, Polymorph just seems like the obvious choice.

I think if Spears could backstab they would probably become too powerful with normal attacks, but I like the idea.

Also, it would be nice if spears had a different weapon attack over All In, maybe like a stab/penetrate attack which did reduced damage, but pierced armour.

A fitting replacement for the special attack of a spear would be some kind of penetration attack: Damage the target enemies and 1 enemiy in close range behind the target.

Medusa head scales with Int not Str, if my memory is not mistaken. Okey, it scales with Str, what seems a bit odd.

Why should more skills scale of Finesse? There are two finesse skill trees and one Str skill tree, so the really disadvantaged class would be every Str-build?

It is a general issue, that there are far more Int skills than from every other kind, because skill trees like Juggernaut got not picked from Kickstarters.

Yeah I see you point about there being more skills for finesse.

I guess its just lack of variety for spears that annoys me, feels like there's only one path you can go down (In Warfare).

I like making cool builds which combine two or three skill trees, and spears are the only weapon I couldn't really do this with

I play a rogue and a warrior in a playthrough with a friend and I do a lot of crossclassing myself.

Though the main problem with spear would so or so be, that is just to hard to get a good one every few levels, because there are only spears for that. But if I think about, I kind of have similar issues with daggers for my rogue. Our archer has still the easiest way for better weapons.

This has been discussed before. I suggested some sort of "impalement" special attack for spears (+damage and bleeding for three turns). Also I think Medusa head should scale off with INTELLIGENCE.
For me the issue for spears is the same as with 2H. Not a lot of variety (ALL IN seems meh at best); that's why I am pretty bored really fast when using them.

I quite like having Medusa head scale from Strength.
It may not make much logical sense but if more poly skills scaled with the weapon type it would be more useful, but like I say....not much logical sense.